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Peter’s Correspondence on the Actual Freedom List Jonathan
VINEETO: I would like to check with you, if you still want your name on the
website instead of (Richard, List D) Respondent No. 39 JONATHAN: That’s fine. I’d prefer if [you] use my full first name which is Jonathan. Jonathan to Vineeto 13.8.2013 JONATHAN: Peter, you said you threw out a lot of your music because it wallowed in the human condition. What did you keep? PETER: The first thing I gave away was my spiritual books, keeping only a few for reference –
although I have never had to refer to them given the Net is such a rich source of everything and anything spiritual. Music came next for the
reasons you have stated and I only kept two CDs – ‘Lennon Legend’ because it contained three tracks that I found inspirational in motivating
me to become free of malice and sorrow – ‘Imagine’ Contrary to what some people think, the process of becoming free of the Human Condition is not a dispassionate affair and I found it good to tap into whatever inspiration I could – the source of which would vary from person to person obviously. JONATHAN: I ask because I have noticed that just reading about the human condition on the Actual Freedom Trust website has made me loose my appetite for a lot of the music I once enjoyed. PETER: I made my decision after conducting a deliberate experiment – one night when I was feeling particularly good I sat down and played a few of my CDs and checked out what feeling the music evoked. What I discovered was that a majority of music is specifically designed to tug at the heartstrings as in evoking melancholy and sadness and if I wasn’t feeling that way at the start the ‘best’ songs would soon twig a memory of either a sad experience or tap into my underlying sadness and away I would go into that seductive bitter-sweet feeling of sorrow. Some music also provokes anger or taps into the underlying aggression of the sexual urge but by and large the music that is the most popular and the most successful is that which tugs the heartstrings. JONATHAN: Richard once said that the death of another could not in any way diminish him. How much more so would this apply to music? It could not add or take away anything. In short, do you guys listen to music and if so why? PETER: Speaking personally, once I realized the affect that a good deal of music had on me I ‘lost my appetite’ for listening to it – it made sense to stop indulging in something which made me sad in exactly the same way that I ‘lost my appetite’ for indulging in things that made me annoyed or angry. I should also add that listening to music has never been particularly amongst my pleasures and I suspect it is because the several times I have attempted to learn to play music I found that I lacked the natural aptitude or an ‘ear’ for it. I do, however, very much enjoy string instruments played well – guitar, fiddle and banjo – as I find myself appreciating both the skill of the playing and the timbre of notes produced from the combination of plucked or bowed string and a sound box. In a similar vein, I find the same progression from affective reaction to sensuous appreciation has happened in the work I have done in my life – designing and building. Whilst once I would thoughtlessly judge buildings as being either beautiful or ugly, nowadays I appreciate the skill of the craftsmanship of a well designed and built building that a particular group of human beings have made the effort to fashion out of the matter of the earth. To summarize, I have found that actualism is about thoughtfully and deliberately moving from being free of the fickleness and divisiveness of seeking affective pleasure as a way of assuaging affective pain and increasingly replacing it with an ever-increasing sensual appreciation of the wonders of the universe – and nowadays, given that I am a human being, I find myself particularly fascinated by the quite astounding ingenuity and productivity of we homo sapiens.
JONATHAN: Peter, you said you threw out a lot of your music because it wallowed in the human condition. What did you keep? PETER: The first thing I gave away was my spiritual books, keeping only a few for reference –
although I have never had to refer to them given the Net is such a rich source of everything and anything spiritual. Music came next for the
reasons you have stated and I only kept two CDs – ‘Lennon Legend’ because it contained three tracks that I found inspirational in motivating
me to become free of malice and sorrow – ‘Imagine’ JONATHAN: Nice. PETER: Nice? Given that you qualified your question with the comment
perhaps you would like to share the reason you think you have lost your appetite? JONATHAN: I would like to ask a question that is a bit off topic. I have read on the AF site that most if not all people experience themselves as having an ego rather than being an ego. Why? PETER: The process of socialization that very child inevitably undergoes means that all children
are taught to suppress, deny or subjugate their ‘dark side’ hence the seeds of dissociation are sowed early on in life. Those who go on to
succumb to spiritual or religious belief, or the ethical beliefs of secular humanism, take this dissociation a step further What broke me free of this ingrained habit of dissociation was the realization that deep down inside I was as mad and as bad as everyone else. JONATHAN: Is it the ego that is experiencing it self as having an ego? In other words is the watcher (not to use a spiritual term I just can’t think of better way to put) the ego or is the watcher consciousness that has an ego layered over it? PETER: Have you ever done any meditation? The reason I ask is that if you have you might well be able to answer the question yourself from your own experience. Put briefly, the idea of meditation is to cut off from sensate experiencing and to stop thinking (as in become the watcher) and allow imagination and affectation to take over … and lo and behold … a new very-grand ethereal-like alter-identity emerges. Personally, I don’t favour using the terms ego and soul as they are terms that have such historical baggage that their meaning has become so confused as to be often meaningless – for example, in those cultures yet to be afflicted by Eastern Mysticism, someone who felt themselves to be God-on-earth would be regarded as the ultimate ego-maniac. I much prefer the terms social identity and instinctual identity to describe the two aspects (nurture and nature) that together make up ‘me’ as an identity simply because they accurately and succinctly describe the sources, causes and resultant effects of being a feeling ‘being’.
PETER: Given that you qualified your question with the comment
perhaps you would like to share the reason you think you have lost your appetite? JONATHAN: I like rock music. Most any genre of music has its negative side but something I have noticed recently is that almost every song that comes on the local rock station here is a song in worship of suffering. It’s like a badge of honour to feel depressed or alone. I have always been turned off by whinny music but in reading about the nuances of suffering I have become more aware of this revelling in sadness and pain in the music I listen to. PETER: I’ve always found it very odd that people write to this mailing list complaining of the fact that what is on offer has been labelled actualism (purely in order to define it as being an alternative to the other ‘isms’, materialism and spiritualism) and likewise some people object that it has a method (cultivating an objective unconditional awareness as an alternative to remaining unaware or practicing a subjective conditional awareness so as to avoid unwanted feelings) or that they object that what is on offer involves an intent to do something (setting one’s sights on becoming happy and harmless, free of malice and sorrow as opposed to the materialist and spiritualist intent of having power over others). As such it is somewhat refreshing to hear you report that you have understood something about the human condition simply by the act of becoming aware of the feelings and passions that underpin the human condition as they happen in your own experience. After all, such a straightforward act of immediate awareness is exactly what asking oneself ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ is designed to promote as constant and ongoing – no more and no less. JONATHAN: Though some music I used to consider really negative even though I enjoyed it now seems really positive. Like NIN (nine inch nails). Go figure on that one. PETER: Having googled some interviews and lyrics of NIN, I too can’t figure that one. * JONATHAN: I would like to ask a question that is a bit off topic. I have read on the AF site that most if not all people experience themselves as having an ego rather than being an ego. Why? PETER: The process of socialization that very child inevitably undergoes means that all children are taught to suppress, deny or subjugate their ‘dark side’ hence the seeds of dissociation are sowed early on in life. JONATHAN: So it is the idea that we can control our feelings or must control our feelings that makes us feel as if we ‘have feelings’? PETER: It’s not an ‘idea’ that we have, it’s a very real way of coping with our dark instinctual side that is ingrained in each and every human being for very practical reason – to make each child a fit member of the family, tribe or society it is born into. Given this scenario it is quite natural that human beings associate with having ‘good’ feelings (being good) and dissociate from having ‘bad’ feelings (not being bad). This is why developing an objective awareness of the full range and depths of one’s own feelings and passions in action is initially extremely difficult – it is an unnatural process that runs counter to all of one’s social conditioning, not to mention one’s ‘self’-centred instincts. * JONATHAN: Is it the ego that is experiencing it self as having an ego? In other words is the watcher (not to use a spiritual term I just can’t think of better way to put) the ego or is the watcher consciousness that has an ego layered over it? PETER: Have you ever done any meditation? The reason I ask is that if you have you might well be able to answer the question yourself from your own experience. JONATHAN: I have never done any serious meditating no, but in the little I did I always got confused about what the hell was going on. Hehehe. From what you are saying I gather that the ‘watcher’ is not consciousness, and that it disappears as the instinctual identity in an actual freedom. So when I feel like I am watching myself act, it is really myself that is watching myself? I am taking baby steps. PETER: If I read you right, you have come across the common conundrum that many people have when mulling over actualism – how can ‘I’ become aware of ‘I’, or how can ‘I’ change ‘I’ or how can ‘I’ eliminate ‘I’? Personally, I didn’t get too hung up about such questions. Maybe because I am a practical, down-to-earth person, I figured that if I wanted to change then it was up to me, if I wanted to be free it was up to me and if I wanted to become aware of ‘me’ and how ‘I’ operate then I have a brain whose function is not only to be aware of things but also to make sense of things. In short, spiritualists regard thinking as the root of all evil and hence they abandon clear thinking and common sense in favour of refined feelings and imaginary scenarios. In contrast, actualists acknowledge the fact that the instinctual passions are the root of all human malice and sorrow and in doing so they are then free to engage clear thinking and common sense in order to come to their senses. * PETER: Put briefly, the idea of meditation is to cut off from sensate experiencing and to stop thinking (as in become the watcher) and allow imagination and affectation to take over … and lo and behold … a new very-grand ethereal-like alter-identity emerges. Personally, I don’t favour using the terms ego and soul as they are terms that have such historical baggage that their meaning has become so confused as to be often meaningless – in those cultures yet to be afflicted by Eastern Mysticism, someone who felt themselves to be God-on-earth would be regarded as the ultimate ego-maniac. JONATHAN: Or virgin born saviour of the world. That is if the bastard existed at all. People like confidence and security. Every culture somehow assimilates those experiences into itself. PETER: I remember when I abandoned my spiritual beliefs I discovered two distinct layers of fear. The first fears were to do with being an outcast, not belonging to a group – quite valid fears given the history of ostracization and even persecution that those who have left religious/spiritual groups have been subject to … and are still being subject to. The other level was far, far deeper – an atavistic fear that unless one looks to the Heavens one will end up in Hell and if one should turn one’s back on God then one will indeed incur wrath of God, be it a He, She or It.. * PETER: PS. Dissociation – an example in the words of a George Harrison song – ‘But if I seem to act unkind, it isn’t me, it’s just my mind.’ JONATHAN: That is a good example. Personally I would not throw that one out for the fact that it is such a good example. Dissociation – an example in the words of a NIN song – ‘There is no you there is only me’. Because I think he is talking about himself. I like to listen to that song because it makes me reflect on the situation with a beat. PETER: The reason I used a George Harrison lyric as an example of dissociation was that he was well known for his Eastern Mystical beliefs. I know nothing about NIN or the author of the lyrics but on the face of it ‘there is no you there is only me’ takes dissociation a step further into solipsism.
PETER: As such it is somewhat refreshing to hear you report that you have understood something about the human condition simply by the act of becoming aware of the feelings and passions that underpin the human condition as they happen in your own experience. After all, such a straightforward act of immediate awareness is exactly what asking oneself ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ is designed to promote as constant and ongoing – no more and no less. JONATHAN: As I have said elsewhere on this list, that is a great question that brings you face to face with what is happening now, but the whole getting back to being happy and harmless thing is distracting to me. I find that getting back to being happy and harmless consist in being attentive to whatever is going on and happiness and harmlessness follow naturally. I don’t get back to being happy and harmless and then examine what is going on, that seems backwards. PETER: In my experience, happiness and harmless didn’t ‘follow naturally’ because malice and sorrow is instinctual, which means than being happy and being harmless is by no means a natural condition. The natural (default) condition of all human beings in all societies down the ages has been, and still is, one of antagonism and anguish.
* JONATHAN: Though some music I use to consider really negative even though I enjoyed it now seems really positive. Like NIN (nine inch nails). Go figure on that one. PETER: Having googled some interviews and lyrics of NIN, I too can’t figure that one. JONATHAN: Did you look at old interviews or new interviews. The guy was once on a lot of drugs, but now he has cleaned up. I’m not saying his music has the intention of being positive, I just find that for me it is. You said that a good place to observe and reflect on the human condition was Oprah (I think it was you). For me it is NIN. The lyrics often nail down exactly what it means to be a fearful, lonely self. I find things in the lyrics also that I flip for myself to apply to my life or the way I think. PETER: I recently watched a television documentary on the music of the 60’s and 70’s, a unique time in that it was the (first?) time that a substantive youth culture emerged with a powerful world-wide voice in the form of its own music. What was obvious to me was that there were many lyrics that were insightful about aspects of the human condition – albeit very often chemically-induced insights – but equally obvious was the gradual decline of inspirational/ aspirational lyrics over the years combined with an increasing predominance of songs of anger (laying the blame for one’s lot in life on others) or songs of anguish (laments to the reality that societies, per se, do not, will not and indeed can not change). In short, the baby boomers failed to change society … which is only to be expected since it is impossible to change society fundamentally because within the human condition, passion and belief rule the roost in each and every culture including all the sub-cultures and counter-culture cultures. Not that a final sign of the failure of the baby boomers to achieve any sort of social change was needed but Mick Jagger’s acceptance of a Knighthood could well be it. Once famous for his anti-establishment song lyrics, at the height of his fame in 1967 Mick told the BBC: ‘I don’t really want to be part of the now establishment, but unfortunately you can’t but help create your own establishment, and that’s what we’re doing’ and in 2003 the now Sir Mick told reporters: ‘I don’t think the establishment as we knew it exists any more.’ It is not that the establishment doesn’t exist any more, Sir Mick had become the establishment, and as such a target for the next generation of angry young men and women looking for something to be angry about or someone to be angry at. * JONATHAN: So it is the idea that we can control our feelings or must control our feelings that makes us feel as if we ‘have feelings’? PETER: It’s not an ‘idea’ that we have, it’s a very real way of coping with our dark instinctual side that is ingrained in each and every human being for very practical reason – to make each child a fit member of the family, tribe or society it is born into. Given this scenario it is quite natural that human beings associate with having ‘good’ feelings (being good) and dissociate from having ‘bad’ feelings (not being bad). This is why developing an objective awareness of the full range and depths of one’s own feelings and passions in action is initially extremely difficult – it is an unnatural process that runs counter to all of one’s social conditioning, not to mention one’s ‘self’-centred instincts. Given this scenario it is quite natural that human beings associate with having ‘good’ feelings (being good) and dissociate from having ‘bad’ feelings (not being bad). JONATHAN: So would it be fair to say that in the actualist method, there is neither associating nor dissociating? If so what do you call that? PETER: Firstly, in re-reading my response with regard to dissociation I realize that I have left out the most fundamental reason for human beings being dissociated – that each and every child is born, pre-primed for a ‘self’ to form. By about age two each child instinctually feels themselves to be an identity who lives ‘in’ the body and is thus alien to or dissociated from not only their own flesh and blood body as well as other bodies but also from the physical world itself. To put it another way, each and every human being experiences an inner world and an outer world and never the twain shall meet – unless one is consumed by spiritual belief whereupon calenture can take over and the inner feelings grow so big that ‘I’ can even imagine ‘I’ have transcended the outer world or even in extreme cases that ‘I’ am ‘The Creator’ of the outer world. But back to your question. For me, it was not a question about associating (as in ‘I’ should really love myself) or dissociating (as in ‘I’ don’t like being here so much ‘I’ want to go somewhere else). By the time I came across Richard I had already discovered by experience that both options are no more than an ultimately unsatisfactory means of coping with the human condition, not ways of becoming free of it. As such, I found it reasonably easy to drop my resentment at having to be here and its associated cynicism as well as my accumulated spiritual beliefs of an other-than-physical world and get on with the business of being as fully here in this physical actual world as is possible, in this moment – which means to do whatever it takes to be as happy and as harmless as possible being here, in this moment. * JONATHAN: I have never done any serious meditating no, but in the little I did I always got confused about what the hell was going on. Hehehe. From what you are saying I gather that the ‘watcher’ is not consciousness, and that it disappears as the instinctual identity in an actual freedom. So when I feel like I am watching myself act, it is really myself that is watching myself? I am taking baby steps. PETER: If I read you right, you have come across the common conundrum that many people have when mulling over actualism – how can ‘I’ become aware of ‘I’, or how can ‘I’ change ‘I’ or how can ‘I’ eliminate ‘I’? JONATHAN: No you do not read me right. I am not hung up in the sense that I cannot move forward. I just want to know what the hell is going on, how does it work? I have no problem excepting the fact the ‘I’ can change ‘I’. I just want to know if it is correct to say that ‘I’ is layered over consciousness. But really it seems like ‘I’ am not changing ‘I’, but rather my consciousness having been stimulated by AF site is changing ‘I’. I don’t know if that makes sense but there it is. PETER: It makes perfect sense to me because it was after all Richard’s words that got me off my bum and set me off doing something about myself. * PETER: I remember when I abandoned my spiritual beliefs I discovered two distinct layers of fear. The first fears were to do with being an outcast, not belonging to a group – quite valid fears given the history of ostracization and even persecution that those who have left religious/ spiritual groups have been subject to … and are still being subject to. The other level was far, far deeper – an atavistic fear that unless one looks to the Heavens one will end up in Hell and if one should turn one’s back on God then one will indeed incur wrath of God, be it a He, She or It.. JONATHAN: I have been an atheist since I was 16 so I have not thought of the actualist path as turning away from God, but have been apprehensive about leaving behind humanity. PETER: I gave up on believing in God in my teens as well only to be suckered into Eastern spirituality in latter life, somehow managing to turn a blind eye to all of its religiosity. When I gave up believing in Eastern spirituality, I was somewhat surprised at the extent to which the mere fact I was born into a Christian family and a Christian society had on fashioning me as a social identity. Turning an objective awareness on my own morals, ethics, values and beliefs revealed a lot about ‘me’ that I had no idea was there. JONATHAN: Grief is one thing oddly enough that I am afraid of losing the propensity for. PETER: I do understand that this is a tough one, for compassion is upheld as being the most noble of all human traits. A few things helped me move past this loggerhead. One, I have experienced grief as one of my sons died in his teens so I know the feeling well – it’s a bottomless pit of sorrow that I could see would ruin my life if I clung on to it and didn’t let it go. The second was that it simply made sense that unless I let go of grief, and its associated grievous feelings, I would never be free of sorrow … and if I was not free of sorrow then I would never be free of resentment and if I wasn’t free of resentment then I would never be free of anger. The very notion that ‘I’ can pick and chose the aspects of the human condition ‘I’ want to be free of and still aspire to be free of the human condition in toto did not at all make sense to me. * PETER: P.S. Dissociation – an example in the words of a George Harrison song – ‘But if I seem to act unkind, it isn’t me, it’s just my mind’. JONATHAN: That is a good example. Personally I would not throw that one out for the fact that it is such a good example. Dissociation – an example in the words of a NIN song – ‘There is no you there is only me’. Because I think he is talking about himself. I like to listen to that song because it makes me reflect on the situation with a beat. PETER: The reason I used a George Harrison lyric as an example of dissociation was that he was well known for his Eastern Mystical beliefs. I know nothing about NIN or the author of the lyrics but on the face of it ‘there is no you there is only me’ takes dissociation a step further into solipsism.
JONATHAN: Is that not where spiritual dissociation leads? Only the Self exists. PETER: Yep, and from solipsism t’is but a small step to full-blown narcissism. JONATHAN: Maybe it is the dark enlightenment. PETER: The much revered spiritual state of Enlightenment is a state in which one believes one has
transcended darkness – as such seeing the Light or being the Light is totally dependant on there being darkness One of the good things about the Actual Freedom Trust website and this mailing list is that one of its founders is a whistle-blower to the whole charade of Enlightenment. Indeed if he hadn’t become free of the delusion of Enlightenment there would be no website and neither would I be writing this post on this mailing list, nor would you be reading it.
PETER: The natural (default) condition of all human beings in all societies down the ages has been, and still is, one of antagonism and anguish. JONATHAN: Default? Natural? I never really meant to convey that I think happiness and harmlessness are the default condition of human beings, rather that the process of attentiveness brings it about naturally without any volition on my part such as ‘getting back to being happy and harmless’. Perhaps getting back to being happy and harmless simply means being attentive? But I have to question your previous statement that antagonism and anguish are the default condition. Certainly there is a lot of that around, but there are also people with exceptionally good dispositions which seem to be their natural demeanour. Felicitous feelings do arise for no good reason. Is there really only one default state, or even a default state at all? Just to be clear, I was speaking of the process of attentiveness leading naturally to a happy, harmless, sensuous state, not that state it self being natural or default. PETER: Perhaps some practicals example of what I mean by the default position might be useful. In 1999, I was visiting a former client who wanted some advice in order to retrofit his house with additional rainwater tanks, solar power and the like because he, like many others, was convinced that there would be a world-wide break down of services due to massive computer failures at the turn of the millennium – http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/cyberspace/jan-june98/y2000_6-11.html He then proceeded to tell me of his other preparations – stock-piling food, cash, petrol, planting a vegetable garden and the like. When he came to the end of his list, I asked him had he bought a gun? He looked at me quizzically and then I explained that if the doomsday scenario was true and all essential services did fail and you were the only one with water, food and fuel then you may well need a gun in order to protect your stash. In other words, when what is often referred to as the thin veneer of civilization breaks down, the default human condition comes to the fore. The reason I could so readily see the flaw in his planning was that I came to be aware of this default position in operation in myself – whenever ‘I’ didn’t get what I wanted or felt ‘I’ deserved then ‘I’ felt resentful, a subtle or not so subtle anger resulted and ‘I’ begin to plot a subtle, or not so subtle, revenge. The other examples of this default position – and they are so widespread as to be universal – come from observation of species of animals other than we human animals. As you have recently noted on this mailing list, chimps are of particular interest, being our closet surviving genetic cousins, in that they too wage war, they too murder, rape, pillage, have family disputes, compete for status, resort to subterfuge, become depressed, waste away from grief and so on. I remember at one stage thinking that human beings are different in that we are not wild animals but domesticated animals but I soon realized I was looking for excuses rather than clearly looking at the facts of the instinctual passions in operation. I recently read a book by a biologist on the subject of violence in which the author also took note of violence in other animals including chimps in the context of discussing the nurture-nature debate as to the causes of violence in humans, citing many observations of animals in the wild as well as laboratory studies on mice. In the very next chapter however she made the statement that human animal children ‘are born innocent’, a statement which made a mockery of her observations that malice is indeed instinctual in animals and blatantly contradicted her presentation of the evidence for malice being instinctual. Upon refection, I could well understand her stance for to admit to, and fully take on board, the fact that malice was instinctual to the human animal flies in the face of the born-innocent belief that is core to the nurturist credo. Not only that but to acknowledge that the malice and sorrow within the human condition is deeply rooted in the instinctual animal passions would mean that the nurturists would be seen for the band-aid dispensers they are and the spiritualists would be seen for the snake oil sellers they are It’s understandable that a way of becoming free of instinctual malice and sorrow will be fought tooth and nail, not only by those with a professional and personal interest in hawking the traditional solutions, but by each and every instinctual being … including ‘me’. But then again there is no one with a more vital and pressing interest in my being free of the human condition than ‘me’. You may well think I am flogging a point here but what I am attempting to do is indicate that becoming happy and harmless does involve a good deal of work and stubborn persistence in that one is attempting to do something that is unnatural in that it runs counter to traditional human aspirations, both socially and instinctually.
JONATHAN: So would it be fair to say that in the actualist method, there is neither associating nor dissociating? If so what do you call that? PETER: For me, it was not a question about associating (as in ‘I’ should really love myself) or dissociating (as in ‘I’ don’t like being here so much ‘I’ want to go somewhere else). By the time I came across Richard I had already discovered by experience that both options are no more than an ultimately unsatisfactory means of coping with the human condition, not ways of becoming free of it. As such, I found it reasonably easy to drop my resentment at having to be here and its associated cynicism as well as my accumulated spiritual beliefs of an other-than-physical world and get on with the business of being as fully here in this physical actual world as is possible, in this moment – which means to do whatever it takes to be as happy and as harmless as possible being here, in this moment. JONATHAN: Being fully here? You mean associating with the physical world at this moment via ‘I’? PETER: No, I mean to do whatever it takes to be as happy and as harmless as possible being here, in this moment. JONATHAN: You must know what it takes if you are serious about this actualism thing. When you say whatever it takes, you mean associating with the physical world at this moment via ‘I’? I am trying to be clear about what the process involves. PETER: No, I don’t mean ‘associating with the physical world at this moment via ‘I’’. Once I acknowledged that ‘who’ I think and feel I am is a psychological and psychic non-physical entity, I understood that the reasons why ‘I’ was cut off from (was in fact dissociated from) – and therefore sought union with (an affective association with) – the physical world. What I then did was to follow Richard’s lead and put the method he used to become free into practice. The first step was to become virtually free of malice and sorrow such that I could live with my fellow human beings in peace and harmony. Only then did the fact that only ‘I’ stand in the way of my freedom become palpable as opposed to an intellectual understanding. To give you a prosaic example of this approach, it took me a good deal of time and effort trying to become good at my profession, a lot of hands-on experience, many trail and error investigations of what worked and didn’t, and an astounding amount of dismantling of the truths and homilies I had been taught. Over time, all of this came together as it were and gradually I was able to stand on my own two feet which then led to ‘me’ being able to let go of the controls and allow the design of the building or the building of the building happen by itself as it were. I see the process happening similarly on the path to actual freedom – only after ‘I’ do everything ‘I’ can to become free from malice and sorrow is it possible for ‘me’ to have the confidence to dare risking exiting the stage. * PETER: When I gave up believing in Eastern spirituality, I was somewhat surprised at the extent to which the mere fact I was born into a Christian family and a Christian society had on fashioning me as a social identity. JONATHAN: Long after the belief is gone vestigial guilt’s and fears can still linger. PETER: Yep. Religious/ spiritual morals and ethics run deep – I remember being astounded as to how they had infiltrated my life and conspired to inhibit my sensual enjoyment of being alive. Nowadays the reason for the need for morals and ethics is obvious – many religious/ spiritual morals and ethics have been invented so as to curb the instinctual passions and inhibit sensual delight lest human beings abandon their social responsibilities in favour of hedonism, licentiousness and debauchery. JONATHAN: To me that illustrates perfectly the fact that feelings are on a deeper level than thought. Intellectually one can be certain that a belief is false but in his heart he is irrationally uncertain. PETER: That’s where attentiveness comes in to play. A belief is a passionately-held conviction, hence the way to discover beliefs is to become aware of your feelings when and as they happen. Again, a practical example. Vineeto and I do not have any arguments about anything nowadays. The way we got rid of arguments was that anything we disagreed about we simply put the matter on the table and found out the facts of the matter. What we discovered was that most of what we argued about were beliefs either of us, or both of us, held. Once we discovered and acknowledged the fact of the matter that was the end of belief. * JONATHAN: Grief is one thing oddly enough that I am afraid of losing the propensity for. PETER: I do understand that this is a tough one, for compassion is upheld as being the most noble of all human traits. A few things helped me move past this loggerhead. One, I have experienced grief as one of my sons died in his teens so I know the feeling well – it’s a bottomless pit of sorrow that I could see would ruin my life if I clung on to it and didn’t let it go. The second was that it simply made sense that unless I let go of grief, and its associated grievous feelings, I would never be free of sorrow … JONATHAN: Makes sense to me too, though I fear not caring more than sorrow. PETER: Does it make sense that one does not need to feel sad in order to actually care? * PETER: One of the good things about the Actual Freedom Trust website and this mailing list is that one of its founders is a whistle-blower to the whole charade of Enlightenment. Indeed if he hadn’t become free of the delusion of Enlightenment there would be no website and neither would I be writing this post on this mailing list, nor would you be reading it. JONATHAN: Was Richard what they call a ‘teacher’ in his enlightenment days? PETER: No. He reports that being a Messiah did not sit well with him and visiting India – where Messiahs can literally be found on every street corner – opened his eyes such that he never did go public. JONATHAN: And I don’t know if you can answer this one but here goes: I have read at the AF site about psychic energies. Are enlightened persons more sensitive to these and if so, do you think they would be perplexed at Richards alleged lack of instinctual passions? PETER: Enlightened beings live in a psychic bubble of their own creation, an imaginary bubble that protects them from the supposed evil forces in the psychic world. Because the imaginary bubble is psychic and not actual they have to continuously maintain it lest holes appear where evil can seep in or lest it collapse entirely. The best way to strengthen and maintain the bubble is to have people believe that they are a Messiah and that they have a Message, hence the constant drive for fame and adulation. To directly answer your questions, I have seen an enlightened being totally paranoid that someone was attempting to penetrate his psychic bubble – to give him ‘the evil eye’ as it were. And I would suspect that most enlightened people would initially regard Richard as being a non-spiritual spiritualist but if they did really understand what he is on about they would regard him as the personification of evil for the sole reason that they live in a world where there is only Good and/or Evil – all else is an illusion to them.
JONATHAN: You must know what it takes if you are serious about this actualism thing. When you say whatever it takes, you mean associating with the physical world at this moment via ‘I’? I am trying to be clear about what the process involves. PETER: No, I don’t mean ‘associating with the physical world at this moment via ‘I’’. Once I acknowledged that ‘who’ I think and feel I am is a psychological and psychic non-physical entity, I understood that the reasons why ‘I’ was cut off from (was in fact dissociated from) – and therefore sought union with (an affective association with) – the physical world. JONATHAN: So would it be fair to say that dissociation is the very nature of ‘I’? PETER: Yes, this is how I put in a previous post to you –
The pertinent question that only you can answer is – is this a fact in your own experience, i.e. do you experience that ‘you’, by ‘your’ very non-physical nature, are dissociated from the physical world? If you can answer yes in your own experience then you move from an intellectual understanding to having an experiential understanding – from uncertainty to surety. * PETER: What I then did was to follow Richard’s lead and put the method he used to become free into practice. The first step was to become virtually free of malice and sorrow such that I could live with my fellow human beings in peace and harmony. Only then did the fact that only ‘I’ stand in the way of my freedom become palpable as opposed to an intellectual understanding. To give you a prosaic example of this approach, it took me a good deal of time and effort trying to become good at my profession, a lot of hands-on experience, many trail and error investigations of what worked and didn’t, and an astounding amount of dismantling of the truths and homilies I had been taught. Over time, all of this came together as it were and gradually I was able to stand on my own two feet which then led to ‘me’ being able to let go of the controls and allow the design of the building or the building of the building happen by itself as it were. I see the process happening similarly on the path to actual freedom – only after ‘I’ do everything ‘I’ can to become free from malice and sorrow is it possible for ‘me’ to have the confidence to dare risking exiting the stage. JONATHAN: Is fear still a factor at that point? How far away from it do you think you are? PETER: I am in fact still the same step away from being actually free as I was at the start, the only difference – and it is no small difference – is that I have stripped away all of the excuses I used to have as to why I shouldn’t take that step. I recently heard Richard say that becoming virtually free of malice and sorrow is something you do ‘in the meantime’ – meaning it is something you do if you are not yet free of the human condition. My experience is that unless one is willing to make that level of commitment to actualizing peace on earth, then one might as well forget the whole notion of becoming free of the human condition, because otherwise, what one would be doing in essence would be ‘waiting for Godot’. JONATHAN: And I still don’t think you have made it clear what doing everything you can to become free means. I was making the point earlier that being attentive to what is going on in me brings me to my senses, rather than ‘me’ getting back to being happy and harmless the state occurred much the way you say in your building analogy below though you seem to be saying that that is the second stage. PETER: And yet what I said in my analogy was that I spent –
I notice that you have taken up the topic of effort with Richard to the point of asking him what I mean by what I say. All I am saying is that in my experience and in the experience of others that I have had the opportunity to directly observe and converse with or read reports of their experience, it takes effort to firstly understand what an actual freedom from the human condition is and what the method to become free involves, secondly that it takes effort to get an unbiased attentiveness up and running such that it becomes effortless, and thirdly that it takes effort to root out and clearly understand the reasons for not being happy and harmless in this moment such that you don’t ever fall into the same trap again in a similar circumstances. That effort is needed in the first two cases is obvious to me, as I think it may be becoming obvious to you – it was quite natural that at first I misunderstood actualism to be another version of spiritualism and an actual freedom to be equivalent to a spiritual freedom and attentiveness to be synonymous with spiritual awareness for the simple reason that up until now there was only the either/or paradigms of materialism and/or spiritualism on offer. If I take your current line of questioning to this list at face value, is this not also your experience – that it takes a good deal of effort firstly to understand what is on offer here and secondly to garner the genuine intent needed to be a pioneer in this business? * JONATHAN: To me that illustrates perfectly the fact that feelings are on a deeper level than thought. Intellectually one can be certain that a belief is false but in his heart he is irrationally uncertain. PETER: That’s where attentiveness comes in to play. A belief is a passionately-held conviction, hence the way to discover beliefs is to become aware of your feelings when and as they happen. (…) Again, a practical example. Vineeto and I do not have any arguments about anything nowadays. The way we got rid of arguments was that anything we disagreed about we simply put the matter on the table and found out the facts of the matter. What we discovered was that most of what we argued about were beliefs either of us, or both of us, held. Once we discovered and acknowledged the fact of the matter that was the end of belief. JONATHAN: Perhaps the asterisk indicates that you will do exactly what I am about to ask of you in your last post in this series, but could you give a specific example of the above? PETER: You might have noticed that I posted an excerpt from my Journal yesterday on this mailing list in which I described how the belief that others needed to change in order for me to be happy finally collapsed in a heap as it were. You might also find other personal and practical examples in the two chapters of my Journal that are available gratis on the Actual Freedom Trust website. The asterisks merely indicate that the conversation has been broken up over the course of time and is not necessarily continuous. * JONATHAN: Grief is one thing oddly enough that I am afraid of losing the propensity for. PETER: I do understand that this is a tough one, for compassion is upheld as being the most noble of all human traits. A few things helped me move past this loggerhead. One, I have experienced grief as one of my sons died in his teens so I know the feeling well – it’s a bottomless pit of sorrow that I could see would ruin my life if I clung on to it and didn’t let it go. The second was that it simply made sense that unless I let go of grief, and its associated grievous feelings, I would never be free of sorrow … JONATHAN: Makes sense to me too, though I fear not caring more than sorrow. PETER: Does it make sense that one does not need to feel sad in order to actually care? JONATHAN: So if Vineeto were to pass on before you, what would actually caring mean in the wake of her death? PETER: If Vineeto were to ‘pass on’ as you put it she would cease to exist as a flesh and blood body and it is impossible to actually care for someone or something that does not actually exist. JONATHAN: You would not feel sad (I don’t know maybe you would at this point), you would not indulge in memories, so how would you describe the experience of someone close to you dying in terms of actually caring rather than being sad? PETER: As I said, it is impossible to actually care for something or someone that does not actually exist, what actually happens is an actual sense of loss in that the person or thing that you were accustomed to being around no longer exists. If this experience of loss is an affective experience then I would experience it as a personal feeling of grief – an utterly self-centred feeling that can do nothing to reverse the situation, nor do anything at all for the person for whom I grieve because they no longer exist. I remember the first time I came across the futility of grief was when my father died. I watched my mother go through the usual grieving process until it finally wore out and she started to get on with her life again. It struck me at the time that the last thing my father would have not wanted was for her to suffer simply because he, through no fault of his own, had died. Of course an intellectual understanding is one thing and it took the death of my son before I fully experienced that grief is an utterly selfish feeling that obviously can’t do a skerrick of good for the person who is dead yet did a good deal of harm both for my own well-feeling and also for the well-feelings of those who I choose to inflict my grief upon or share my grief with.
PETER to No 95: Some of the items I recall from my checklist – <snipped for length> This list is by no means exhaustive, but I well remember that the whole question of whether or not the
instinctual passions were indeed genetically-encoded by blind nature was crucial to my really beginning to question the ancient yet still prevalent
religious/ spiritual notions of the causes of evil in human beings. It was also pivotal in my realizing that, given Richard’s experience that
these passions are ‘software’ as opposed to being hardwired, I too had the opportunity to become free of the human condition in toto, should I
so desire. RESPONDENT No 95: That’s an interesting set of considerations to ponder over but I am still able to entertain alternative postulations that are not being killed off by any sense of necessity in what you say. What you say is appealing but that’s all. I don’t hold the following theory, I’m only entertaining it (in the sense of that wonderful quote provided by No 92 in another post i.e. ‘It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.’ – Aristotle), amongst others but it just as plausible to me: PETER to No 95: It’s good to keep in mind that Aristotle made his living and got his kudos from
being a philosopher, hence what he is saying can be paraphrased as – ‘It is the mark of a shrewd philosopher to be able to entertain a thought
without accepting it.’ Given his vocation, his words of wisdom can be seen as nothing more than a disclaimer clause or a ‘get out of jail’
card, one that apparently strikes a chord for those with similar motivations. JONATHAN: Obviously you could not entertain that quote without, as No 53 said, an allergic reaction. PETER: Why would anything that No 53 said be obvious? He has an abysmal track record for making objective observations on this mailing list let alone for factual accuracy – thus far nil. He simply operates on the basis of ‘if you tell enough lies about someone and keep repeating those lies, then someone will believe them’ … and when someone else does, hey presto, you have scored a point. JONATHAN: That is the whole point of the quote. PETER: What is the whole point of the quote – that it is a disclaimer? If so, then what is your point? JONATHAN: It seems that you are unable to take what is useful from this ‘human condition ridden world’. PETER: I do indeed take what is useful in all that my fellow human beings have toiled in bringing to fruition and I do not take it for granted either. An ever-increasing proportion of the human population on this planet is enjoying safety, comfort, leisure and pleasure the likes of which has never, ever existed before, all of which is the result of human endeavour and all of which has been achieved in spite of the ongoing human condition of malice and sorrow. It is staggering to think what could be have been achieved and can be achieved in the future if human beings were indeed free from being continuously hobbled by malice and sorrow. But then again, I have always had a vital interest in peace on earth, both personal and global. JONATHAN: I take it you can’t entertain a thought without accepting it? Or you think it is in bad taste to do so? PETER: I am perfectly capable of abstract thinking and there are a good many things that I don’t know to be fact, but I never regarded the issue of my malice and my sorrow as being at all abstract. Consequently I took up the challenge of finding out whether of not my malice and my sorrow was indeed an archaic biological inheritance or whether, as is commonly believed, it is the result of imperfect nurture/ environment. JONATHAN: True philosophy is futile, but a true statement can still come from a philosopher’s mouth even if he is not ‘actually free’. PETER: And yet that very same philosopher according to his own philosophy would immediately offer the disclaimer that having ‘an educated mind’, he is only entertaining the thought that it is true statement without accepting that it is true. JONATHAN: Or perhaps what is written above is your disclaimer for those who might want to think about actualism before accepting it? PETER: No. What I was endeavouring to do was point out that anyone who thinks about actualism whilst firmly holding the view that ‘it is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it’ will be very likely disinclined to firstly make up their own mind sufficiently as to whether or not the deep-seated human passions of fear, aggression, nurture and desire are in fact instinctual and secondly be disinclined to find, in the everyday circumstances of their life, sufficient motivation to take the necessary steps to become actually free of these passions. Here’s a question for you. Would not someone who accepted Mr. Aristotle’s logic as being a universal truth regard someone who accepted something to be a fact so much so that they acted on the fact as having an ‘uneducated’ mind? * PETER to No 95: I see that you are currently having a conversation with Richard about nature vs.
nurture. I find it curious that you have yet to say where you stand on the subject as to whether the instinctual passions are at core
genetically-encoded or whether they are the result of an imperfect nurturing process. JONATHAN: About those instinctual passions. I recently read somewhere that there is a part of the brain believed to be responsible for aggression. Not a chemical, but a part of the brain. I have heard talk here before about brain scans and how they would prove nothing since the ‘self’ is not anywhere to be found ‘in there’. Well what about that pressure in the brain? Perhaps a physical change is occurring in the brain? Brain damage in a good way? PETER: I recently read a book entitled ‘The Biology of Violence’ in which the author summarized a good deal of the discoveries of the brain circuitry and electrochemical reactions involved in causing all humans to feel and act upon the biological survival instinct manifest as ‘me’, a feeling being that has taken up a parasitical residence inside this flesh and blood body. The book was a purely academic study of violence in human beings because experiential studies of the human predilection for violence have been declared taboo, which is why the only course of action if you really want to find out the root cause of human malice – and hence of human sorrow – is to make your own experiential study into how and why ‘I’ am as ‘I’ am. The means to making this exploration is both simple and straightforward – the one and only necessity is to get in touch with one’s feelings, when and as they are occurring, each moment again and by doing so expose them to the bright light of one’s own awareness and one’s own intent to rid oneself of malice and sorrow. There’s more to actualism than thinking … far, far more.
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